News

News

Feature Item

Washington, D.C., 15 June 2015— New work from the Geophysical Laboratory's Stewart McWilliams and Alexander Goncharov used laboratory techniques to mimic stellar and planetary conditions, and observe how noble gases behave under these conditions, in order to better understand the atmospheric and internal chemistry of these celestial objects.

Washington, D.C., 22 June 2015—New research from a team including the Geophysical Laboratory’s Alexander Goncharov focuses on the physics underlying the formation of the types of ice that are stable under the paradoxical-seeming conditions likely to be found in planetary interiors. Their work could challenge current ideas about the physical properties found inside icy planetary bodies.

Washington, D.C.— The Geophysical Laboratory’s Christopher Glein has revealed the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. His findings are an important step toward determining whether life could exist, or could have previously existed, on the sixth planet’s sixth-largest moon.

Washington, D.C., 28 April 2015—The high-resolution mass spectrometer “Panorama” built by Nu Instruments, Ltd. was installed in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, UCLA in March. Panorama was paid for with funds from the Deep Carbon Observatory, University of California Los Angeles, US National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, Shell Projects and Technologies, Emerging Technologies Group, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The Geophysical Laboratory's Doug Rumble is a co-investigator of the project.

Washington, D.C., 22 April 2015— New work from the Geophysical Laboratory's Russell Hemley and Ivan Naumov hones in on the physics underlying the recently discovered fact that some metals stop being metallic under pressure.

Washington, D.C., 14 April 2015— The cores of terrestrial planets and satellite bodies, including the Moon, all contain large quantities of iron. New work from the Geophysical Laboratory's Yingwei Fei provides new measurements of iron at lunar core conditions that will help build a direct compositional and velocity model of the Moon’s core in conjunction with limited lunar seismic data.

Washington, D.C.—A team of scientists, including the Geophysical Laboratory's Zhenxian Liu, report experimental evidence for tetrahedrally coordinated carbon in high pressure carbonates. This bonding behavior could have significant implications for carbon reservoirs and fluxes, as well as for understanding the global geodynamic carbon cycle.

Washington. D.C.—The Geophysical Laboratory's Guoyin Shen and Zhisheng Zhao, have found that the hybrid Type II glass-like carbon possesses many advantageous properties, such as high strength, high volume compression, superelastic recovery from large volume deformation, and more.

Washington, D.C., 2 March 2015—The Geophysical Laboratory's Robert Hazen has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation for a three-year data-driven research project on the co-evolution of the planet’s biology and geology.

Washington, D.C., 28 January 2015— New findings from a team including Geophysical Laboratory's Ronald Cohen and Peng Zhang shows that a missing piece of the traditional theory explaining why metals become less conductive when they are heated was needed to complete the puzzle that explains Earth's field-generating process.

The AGU Fall Meeting 2014 will take place in San Francisco, CA from December 14-21. Many staff members and postdoctoral associates from the Geophysical Laboratory will attend this year. Check here daily for live updates on each day's science presentations.

Please join in on the AGU conversation by following our live Twitter feed, and including #AGU14 on any relevant tweets!

Washington, D.C., 10 December 2014—New work from the Geophysical Laboratory's Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley delves into the chemistry underlying some surprising recent observations about hydrogen and reveals remarkable parallel between hydrogen and graphene under extreme pressures.